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Sword Art Online is great because in the first episode we’re introduced to the main character. He’s wearing a blue jacket and has kawaii black hair. He walks around and then he fights mobs (that’s short for goblin) before meeting a new friend!

Interesting Premise

The light novel’s (upon which this anime is based) author took a look at .hack and said, “What if I made this good?” and so he did.

10,000 people get locked into a virtual game from which they can’t escape.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Execution

The show delivers on its promises in spades. People die… a lot.

This isn’t .hack’s “lol people are temporarily in a coma” bullshit. People’s bodies are atrophying in a hospital bed somewhere and their brains get fried when they die in the game or any attempt is made to remove them from the game. Fuck yeah, consequences.

MC-kun

Kirito is a pathetic protagonist done right. He can’t trust others, most people he gets involved with die, and he’s filled with enough self-loathing to make Shinji blush. But he doesn’t (well, hasn’t) spent ridiculously long periods of time moping about. The people working on the show figured out that people don’t want to watch someone sit around and cry for an entire episode. Instead the show lets us know what he’s been up to.

For example, in episode 3 MC-kun’s love interest dies. After that, it cuts to a new scene with a little line of text at the bottom simply stating the date. Then a character comes along and says “I heard you’ve been training quite a bit recently.” If you’re not fucking stupid, you’d figure out that Kirito was so distraught at her death that he launched himself into a six-month long training regimen just so he could kill a boss to get a rare item that may resurrect her even though he knew he’d probably die doing so.

And it doesn’t end well, which is what I love about this show.

This is not a show for idiots, so if you got to episode 3 and didn’t understand what was going on, wait until you’re older to watch the show or kill yourself. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a shounen that doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator and I’m fucking enjoying it.

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“This is not a show for idiots, so if you got to episode 3 and didn’t understand what was going on, wait until you’re older to watch the show or kill yourself. It’s been a while since I’ve seen a shounen that doesn’t pander to the lowest common denominator and I’m fucking enjoying it.”

That image doesnt really count. Since its just other women hitting on him in another game (alfheim online)
But its true about the harem though. What I’m listing isnt much of a spoiler but its the definite list of his “collection”.

Asuna (main gf),
Liz (blacksmith girl),
Silica (beast tamer girl),
Suguha (the cousin whos like a “sister”),
Shino (other girl he saved in another game),
Yui (the adorable AI daughter)
and Alice (who will be introduced much much much later.)

I actually did think it had promise in terms of the setting but wow, the execution was just SO BAD that it couldn’t be saved from itself. Much like the other hugely hyped pile of shit from this author, it’s an interesting premise that has a complete breakdown when it comes times to write characters and details. Awful, just awful, and the legions of people that hyped this to hell and back before it aired should cut off their hands so they can’t use the internet anymore, because they are BAD PEOPLE who should be ashamed.

Yeah the show is all right for what it is. My main problem is that were a metric fuckton of people before it aired making it out to be the best thing since they invented porn. And it’s not, it’s an average shounen show at best.

SAO was pretty much “Wasted Potential: The Series” for me. Oddly I might have enjoyed it more if I didn’t agree with you that the concept was damn, damn good. It is a chance to do a real hard scifi, realistic situation, with pretty near-term relevance. With such a strong concept potential stories practically write themselves.

Unfortunately the author, and in turn the adaption, simply wasn’t up to realizing that potential. It’s disjointed, it doesn’t really explore consequences very well, blah blah blah. I can only recall a few other instances where I really thought “Damn, that COULD have been so incredible”. Oh well, it was still an OK ride I guess.